Variants Management

Your situation

Customers and prospects are constantly seeking new options. The need to respond to specific requirements with customized solutions is becoming increasingly important. Obviously you want to adapt, set the trend, but developing and maintaining configurations of all variants is very time consuming. Each new option produces a variation which you need to rewrite for all versions of your products/services. Endless configurations that you continuously need to keep correct and updated. Impossible! In fact, this is a frustrating dilemma. On the one hand, there is the pressure of the market, and on the other, the slowing effect of the lengthy process of variant management. You can see it, you want it, you can do it, but arranging it internally is a different story (altogether). So your company is forced to limit variety in the product range. You are not delivering on what is ‘technically’ within your reach. As a result, you miss out on opportunities and revenue. Meanwhile, you watch small-scale competitors cherry-picking the business with customized, innovative solutions. How long can you keep this up?

Solution: smart design your variant management

What you are essentially looking for is smart variant management. Sofon has an excellent solution for this in the form of software modules that are compatible with your CRM and ERP systems. The principle is that you record knowledge at a lower level, which is correctly and automatically included in all your variations.

You no longer record configurations of variants. Instead, you record the concepts (building blocks) that compose the variants. Each concept is a piece of knowledge, a piece of logic, in which you describe the new option in conjunction with the effect it has on your product/service and all the applicable (legal) regulations. In addition, you describe how to produce the new option.

Suppose you offer a car with an optional number of doors: 3 or 5. The bill of materials for the car with 3 doors state folding front seats. In the 5 door version, the front seats are fixed. The correct products for the front seats therefore depend on the option ‘number of doors.’ You do not need to prepare separate bills of material for three door or five door cars. The same also applies to other parts that vary, depending on the selected options, including for the left and right chairs individually.

Once you have defined and checked a concept, you know it is reliable, so there’s no need to re-check the contents of your product range each time.

Defining and checking a concept is considerably less work than maintaining complete configurations of variants. And the input of a concept does not concern knowledge you need to obtain from somewhere. It is knowledge you have in-house and which you need to provide your products/services. We simply help you make smart use of your own expertise.

We help you use the software modules and embed this relevant business knowledge. This is your knowledge, so you are and always will be in control within your variant management.

Your benefits

No more time-consuming and error-sensitive processes in order to maintain your variants. The time you save can be invested in the market.

You can deliver all the feasible and permissible variants you want, with infinitely less effort.

You can abandon the idea of specials. By defining concepts, any desired variant can be made for every customer, tailored to their needs. The specials you used to sell on a limited scale can now be offered broadly in the market based on your variant logic.

And you can respond faster to changing market needs, making you attractive as a provider.

Your revenue will increase.

This may also interest you

In line with smart variant management, you can also make your configuration management smart. This saves you a lot of time and remedial costs, whilst production is stabilized and calm.